The Democratic Party announced the criteria for presidential candidates to qualify for the party's official third and fourth round of debates in September and October. Details:

ABC and Univision will host the September 12th debate, simulcast in English and Spanish. A possible second evening of debates will be decided by the number of candidates meeting the new criteria.

Candidates must qualify by either meeting the minimum number of donors, OR exceeding polling criteria in party-sanctioned polls.

Candidates must gather donations from 130,000 individual donors (this is double the 65,000 donor count for the June and July debates).

Donors must be represented with a minuimum of 400 donors in each of the 50 states (this is double the 200 per-state donor count for the June and July debates).

Candidates must poll at 2% or higher in three party-approved polls during July and August (this is double the 1% polling requirement for the June and July debates).

The first debates will be held June 26 and 27 (maximum of 10 candidates per evening) in Miami and airing on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo. The second debates will be held July 30 and 31 in Detroit and airing on CNN.

As of the end of May, eighteen candidates have qualified for the June Democratic debates (details below; full list of possible candidates on the top of our home page). And today OnTheIssues adds one final possible Democratic debate contender, and two non-Democratic candidates:

Wayne Messam: Democratic Mayor of Miramar Florida; running to qualify for the June debate.

Justin Amash: Elected as a Republican to the United States Congress; he has been recruited by the Libertarian Party to run as their nominee.

OnTheIssues now covers 20 Democratic contenders, which is the maximum allowed by the rules of the early debates.
The first two scheduled debates -- of about a dozen anticipated debates -- will be held in June and July. The rules are:

There will be two debates, of ten candidates each, on two consecutive evenings.

The ten participants in each debate will be selected randomly (unlike the "two-tiered" system of the Republicans in 2016, which led to accusations of having "the kiddie table.")

A candidate qualifies for the debates by exceeding 1% in three Democratic-party-approved polls, OR they can show "grassroots support"...

A candidate shows "grassroots support" by exceeding 65,000 donors in at least 20 states, with at least 200 unique donors per state.

If the number of qualifiying candidates exceeds 20, then the "poll-based qualifiers" get preference over the "donor-based qualifiers," ranked by polling results.

The 20th candidate is Marianne Wilson, who lists her number of donors on the homepage of her website -- at 70% of the required total this week, and expected to reach the required total soon.
The rest of the field of 20 are listed here, in addition to those in our earlier listings below (these are the new additions to our list just since a month ago!):

Here's the catch for Marianne Williamson and the other less-well-known candidates:
Rule #5 above will exclude candidates if any more candidates now join.
When the 21st candidate joins the race, the struggle begins to NOT be cut out.
The list of likely candidates to still join the race? Here are the candidates we expect may announce by the end of May:

A "special election" means a vacant House seat was filled -- and the winner gets seated immediately.
Winners of the general election will be seated on Jan. 3, 2019.
The new members of Congress listed below are part of the "lame duck" session
-- the period after the election and before the new Congress' inauguration in January.
Some special elections took place before November and some races took some time to count -- inauguration dates listed below.

OnTheIssues disendorsements for candidates who refuse to take issue stances

OnTheIssues condemns candidates with an "IFFY Award" for running an "Issue-Free campaign." These are "iffy" candidates because they refused to provide voters with information on what they believe and how they will legislate. They are likely to be "iffy legislators" too -- never providing their constituents with information, on the belief that the less voters know, the more likely the "iffy" candidates are to get re-elected.

An IFFY award is a non-partisan condemnation: OnTheIssues doesn't care WHAT candidates' issue stances are -- as long as they HAVE issue stances!

At OnTheIssues, we believe that candidates should make clear their issue stances, and if they don't do that, then they should not run for office at all, and if they get elected and still won't divulge their issue stances, that they should resign or be driven from office by outraged constituents. Following are our three "iffy" candidates for 2018:

NBC-10-TV reports that Fung avoided all primary debates:
"The two favorite contenders for the major party’s nominations are refusing to appear in any of the offered statewide forums.
'It’s not OK in a democracy,' NBC 10's political analyst said. 'Avoiding debates might rub voters the wrong way and they might just end up staying home in the general election.' "

During the general election debate, the Providence Journal reported that Fung's independent opponent Joe Trillo brought up the IFFY issue:
"Trillo saved his most colorful exchanges for Fung, whom he called 'wimpy' for not taking positions on issues."

OnTheIssues has been attempting to gather issue stances from Mayor Fung since 2014, when he also ran for Governor (and also provided few issue stances). Mayor Fung has declined to respond to our VoteMatch quiz repeatedly.

KGOU's Trevor Brown reported that the sole one-hour debate on Sept. 24 "waded into social issues,
including abortion, parental rights and gun control. Neither candidate, however, seemed to want to press these issues as campaign focal points."

Edmondson's opponent, however, has made public his stances on those three issues (and more), while Edmondson has not.

OnTheIssues has been attempting to gather issue stances from Edmondson all campaign season. Edmondson has declined to respond to our VoteMatch quiz repeatedly.

Project VoteSmart reprots, "Chele Farley has refused to provide voters with positions on key issues covered by the 2018 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart and voters like you."

The Auburn Citizen commented that "In her campaign launch video... Farley blamed Gillibrand, a Democrat, for the state not getting its fair share from the federal government.... There wasn't much revealed in the video about Farley's platform."

Farley has continued that lack of platform throughout the campaign, running on a platform of Gillibrand's failings.

OnTheIssues has been attempting to gather issue stances from Farley all campaign season. Farley has declined to respond to our VoteMatch quiz repeatedly.